Test Confirms Happy End to Kidnap Case

The touching story of a father reunited with his abducted son that has gripped China since Tuesday appears to have reached a conclusion of sorts.

Peng Gaofeng, a payphone shop owner whose son Wenle was kidnapped three years ago, said an initial DNA test confirmed that a boy spotted by an Internet user and found this week is indeed Wenle.

Mr. Peng told China Real Time that police are doing another round of tests, including with Wenle’s grandparents, as part of required procedures.

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The story of Mr. Peng’s successful search for his lost son ricocheted through the Chinese Internet earlier this week after Chinese journalist Deng Fei, who had helped the search by posting photos of Wenle on his microblogging account, published a video of Mr. Peng seeing Wenle for the first time since the boy was abducted from a public square in the southern city of Shenzhen in 2008.

The Ministry of Public Security said in a press release about Wenle’s case (in Chinese ) that the participation of regular citizens “has had positive significance on broadening clue sources, deterring criminals and rescuing abductions of children.”

“Police will launch careful investigations and will severely crackdown on this phenomenon,” the ministry statement continued, adding that children found begging whose identities cannot be determined will have their DNA information saved in a national database.

In a separate statement released yesterday, the ministry said a national crackdown on child abductions had located nearly 10,000 kidnapped children since it was launched in April 2009.

A police report (in Chinese) published on the website of the Shenzhen municipal government said the woman who had been acting as Wenle’s adoptive mother told authorities her husband brought Wenle home in April 2008 claiming the boy was a son he’d had with another woman while working in Shenzhen. The report said examination of surveillance camera footage of the kidnapping showed that the woman’s husband was the kidnapper. The report gave only his surname, Han and her surname, Gao.

Mr. Han died of an unspecified illness last June, according to the police.

The same police report also confirmed results of the initial DNA test proving the boy to be Wenle, though it remains unclear how authorities in Shenzhen could complete the test in less than two days. A DNA paternity test can take a week or more in the U.S.

In one of the story’s more surprising developments, Mr. Peng announced yesterday that he had rejected the idea of suing Ms. Gao and would continue to allow her to have contact with Wenle. Mr. Peng told China Real Time that he has allowed Ms. Gao talk to Wenle since the boy was returned because he could tell Wenle missed his adoptive mother a lot.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this most mischaracterized the amount of time it typically takes to have a DNA paternity test done in the U.S. as “weeks to months.”

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